Security

OpenClaw v2026.4.1-beta.1: Tasks/chat, boundary review

April 1, 20264 min readUpdated September 11, 2026By OpenClawBlog Team

The security lens for v2026.4.1-beta.1 is its trust boundary. The official record describes an access, approval, or trust-boundary change; this reading keeps the exact tag visible and turns the source bullets into checks an operator can actually repeat.

Pre-release status matters here: stage the tag beside the stable package and do not infer support for every account or platform. A release tag describes the project change. Your Gateway's provider, channel, platform, and account support should be recorded separately.

Channel
Pre-Release

Primary signals
Tasks/chat; Web search/SearXNG; Amazon Bedrock/Guardrails

Publication date
2026-04-01

Boundary review

Tasks/chat

Evidence from the release. add /tasks as a chat-native background task board for the current session, with recent task details and agent-local fallback counts when no linked tasks are visible.

Operator reading. The acceptance test for Tasks/chat is idempotence under interruption: start once, stop the transport, resume, and compare the final record with the original request.

Web search/SearXNG

Evidence from the release. add the bundled SearXNG provider plugin for web_search with configurable host support.

Operator reading. The safe reading of Web search/SearXNG is operational: prove the model can answer the intended task, then force a bounded failure and verify that no side effect is repeated.

Amazon Bedrock/Guardrails

Evidence from the release. add Bedrock Guardrails support to the bundled provider.

Operator reading. Check Amazon Bedrock/Guardrails with a known prompt and a disposable account. Save the selected route, reasoning setting, latency, and refusal or fallback result so another operator can reproduce it.

Chat/error replies

Evidence from the release. stop leaking raw provider/runtime failures into external chat channels, return a friendly retry message instead, and add a specific /new hint for Bedrock toolResult/toolUse session mismatches.

Operator reading. Chat/error replies lives at the handoff between the Gateway and a conversation. Send one harmless message, reconnect once, and compare the account, thread, sender, and final transcript.

What the implementation list adds

Gateway/reload

ignore startup config writes by persisted hash in the config reloader so generated auth tokens and seeded Control UI origins do not trigger a restart loop, while real gateway.auth.* edits still require restart.

Treat Gateway/reload as a boundary change. Exercise one permitted request and one refused request with a test identity, then keep both decisions in the log.

Operator checklist before rollout

Before touching persistent state, capture the version, host, provider, and workspace for Tasks/chat.
Read the linked release record and verify a backup whenever the change can alter configuration or session data.
Interrupt one delivery after admission, reconnect the transport, and compare the final reply with the original conversation.
Force a short transport interruption and verify that retry or recovery preserves the original thread and sender.
Close the test with the evidence attached, and do not widen the rollout while a behavior remains unexplained.

openclaw --version
openclaw gateway status
openclaw security audit

Keep the source trail attached

Close the loop with an explicit next action: keep the candidate isolated, proceed with the staged upgrade, or stop and investigate. Do not treat a green install as proof that the runtime path is correct.

Regression cases from the source

Chat/error replies. stop leaking raw provider/runtime failures into external chat channels, return a friendly retry message instead, and add a specific /new hint for Bedrock toolResult/toolUse session mismatches. Treat the fix as a boundary condition and retain the source wording beside your local result.

Gateway/reload. ignore startup config writes by persisted hash in the config reloader so generated auth tokens and seeded Control UI origins do not trigger a restart loop, while real gateway.auth.* edits still require restart. Keep the reproduction and the post-fix result together in the acceptance record.

This page is a practical reading of the v2026.4.1-beta.1 source record; the release index and Gateway security guide remain the references to use for migrations and support boundaries.